Traditionally, home printers and many commercial grade printers are arranged in a manner that has a printing path for a receiver media that is aligned in a parallel direction with user controls. This allows a user to conveniently load receiver media, remove printed images and access the controls while facing a common “front end” of the printer. Accordingly, most users attempt to arrange such printers on a storage surface so that the “front end” faces outwardly to confront a user. However, this arrangement can create problems when such printers have a long axis leading to the “front end” because it can be difficult to store such printers on a relatively short width on conventional shelving units without extending the “front end” of the printer beyond the edge of the shelf. However, storing such printers with the long axis arranged parallel to a length of the shelf makes it difficult to access and utilize user controls. To further complicate this situation, printer positioning can also be influenced by factors such as a need to arrange the printer in a way that permits easy reloading of donor materials such as thermal ribbons, ink and toner as well as the need to provide adequate ventilation and cord/cable access. Thus, a user of a printer may have little flexibility in the arrangement of a printer within a particular storage area causing the printer to be arranged in a position in from which it is difficult to access printer controls.
A similar problem arises when a printer is equipped with status indicators or an image display in that such indicators and/or image displays are also typically arranged to be viewed from the “front face” of the printer. For example, as described in commonly-assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/570,089 filed May 12, 2000, entitled “A COLOR DIGITAL PRINTER HAVING A GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE FOR DISPLAYING AND SELECTING IMAGES FROM A DIGITAL STORAGE MEDIUM” to Romano et al., a digital printer may include an image display, such as a color LCD, as part of a printer graphical user interface (GUI) to allow the user to select images to be printed and to perform other printer functions. However, such a display typically faces the “front end” only.
Yet another problem of this type is created when a printer is a so-called “docking printer” that is designed to receive a display device such as a cellular phone, digital camera, photo viewer, personal display device, hand held personal computer or like item in a docking station, cradle or like structure to allow cooperation between the printer and the docked display device. Typically such docking printers are adapted to receive a display device that is loaded by a person standing at the “front end” thus, for some printers, it can become more difficult to dock such display devices when the user cannot stand facing the printer. This reduces the frequency with which the devices are docked thus reducing the effective usefulness of the combination.
What is needed in the art is a docking printer that can provide more flexibility and customization of orientation without sacrificing the feature set provided by the combination of the printer and docked display device.